Nearly every dominant telco in Europe has slammed the recent EU proposal that would carve up their businesses - but not BT, (NYSE: BT) the UK’s largest fixed-line carrier.

CEO Ben Verwaayen (via Reuters): “When I saw all the other guys screaming yesterday (Thursday), it was a great indicator that [EC information society and media commissioner Viviane Reding] had done something that’s right.” BT can afford to be smug: it already carved out its network business, Openreach, last year to comply with Ofcom requests. Verwaayen reports Openreach is a much more efficient business; it has better control of its services, and can create new products quicker. But he added of his more fearful rivals: “Maybe they see things that I don’t see.”

-- Ofcom, meanwhile, is reported to be miffed with Reding’s proposals not because it disagrees with them, but because they out-regulate Ofcom, which has actively tried to mould policy rather than sit back and let the free market shape it. As Emily Bell writes in today’s Guardian about Reding: “When you have worked as hard as Ofcom over the past three years to establish yourself as a shiny new converged regulator, it must be somewhat galling to have the Luxembourgeois equivalent of Anthea Turner metaphorically sucking air over her teeth and tutting.”

• Ofcom Proposes to Deregulate Large Portion of UK Broadband Market
• EU Telecom Plan Reaction: Market Leaders Critical, Upstarts Hopeful
• EU Proposes New Powers For Splitting Up Telecom Companies